Review of non-proliferable fuel options in research reactors (TRIGA)

This study is to examine the following aspects resulted from uranium enrichment reduction in TRIGA Mark-III reactor: reactor performance, fuel cycle costs, safety and reliability, and non-proliferation aspects. Fuel models adopted are: existing fuels (20% and 70% enriched with 8.5 wt% U-loaded); proposed fuels (20% and 30% enriched with 12 wt% U-loaded, 40% enriched with 8.5 wt% U-loaded, and 20% enriched with 20 wt% U-loaded). As results, the proposed fuels are disadvantageous over current FLIP-fuelled core in safety margins, reliability and reactor performance. Besides, operating costs will double with 12 wt% U-loaded fuels than with FLIP fuels